Last week I had the great pleasure of speaking with Dr. McDonald Williams, professor of English and son of Alexander McDonald Williams, the founder of the Negro National League’s Pittsburgh Keystones and builder of Central Baseball Park. Among many other fascinating things Dr. Williams told me was the fact that I had unwittingly posted a photo of his house in 1931!
His father owned a bloc of four houses to the right of the grocery pictured here. Going toward the right, the first house after the grocery was rented out; the second was occupied by the family of Rob Bailey, Dr. Williams’s uncle (his mother’s brother, who in fact had worked at Central Park); and the third house, 2624 Wylie, which would be barely visible on the right side in this photo, was the home of Alexander and Margaret Williams, and thus was one of Dr. Williams’s childhood homes. The fourth house, which isn’t pictured here, was where Alexander’s younger brother Charles lived with his wife.
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